


A Candle, Flickering

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Deus Ex Machina, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Not Beta Read, Terminal Illnesses, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26023144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: His specialty has always been fire, and the wick has burned down watching Lysithea fade and being unable to stop it. At times Lorenz is sure that a stiff wind will snuff him out for good, leave him a shell of the man he is supposed to be. The heir of Gloucester, a mage without magic, Thyrsus gathering dust.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Lysithea von Ordelia
Comments: 16
Kudos: 28





	A Candle, Flickering

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [FE Rarepair Week 2019: Lorenz x Lysithea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20823392) by [Madampringle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madampringle/pseuds/Madampringle). 



> I've wanted to write something like this since I finished Verdant Winds but after I read the linked fic I knew I _had_ to, if only to do something with THIS: 
> 
> _“[Fire magic] is like an extension. A burst of emotion from a controlled center. Imagine yourself, in your most dormant state. You are still, you are silent. But inside of you, you are racing with your own thoughts, your own...fears, and hopes. Dreams and values, emotions and passions. When I am hindered by burdens, heavy with sadness or loss, that extension blows away, and there is nothing to pull from. It is unbearably cold, Lysithea."_

It is pleasantly cool in the garden, and Lorenz breathes deeply the scent of flowers and damp earth. The sudden rain of the early afternoon has given way to clear skies in the evening, and the heat that has hung over Gloucester manor for days is gone at last. Lysithea had been impatient to finish dinner and take a walk, and Lorenz had told her to go on without him so he could finish making some final arrangements for a meeting he had the next day with a representative from a village on the outskirts of Gloucester territory. Nearly a year on from the end of the war and there are still occasional border disputes, he thinks with a small shake of his head. People are just happy to be alive and safe, but the villages that had been occupied by empire forces for five years had suffered heavily and have not recovered as quickly, regardless of their feelings about the matter. It is his duty to ensure his people have what is necessary to thrive, and the dissolution of the empire, the collapse of the kingdom, and the fracturing of the Alliance have not changed that. All that has changed is that they are all united under the church as Fódlan had been a thousand years ago, with the professor presiding over the monastery and Claude flitting about to coordinate things on their behalf.

But tomorrow he will deal with all that. This evening he is going to find Lysithea amongst the roses. Later they will return to the manor and whisper late into the night, Lysithea catching him up on her day’s research and Lorenz telling her of his plans for the coming months. This will be the first winter Lysithea has spent at the manor. It is Lorenz’s favorite season, a time to be secure and comfortable inside and enjoy the warmth of one’s hearth, and he is looking forward to sharing that time with her.

Such cozy thoughts are brought to a screeching halt when Lorenz rounds the corner of the path through the bushes and finds Lysithea collapsed, her breath shallow and unsteady. Lorenz throws himself down beside her and brushes her hair out of her face, terror rising in him. He cups her cheeks in his hands and feels the pulse under her jaw as he’d learned to do when they were still at the academy and the professor had insisted everyone who was to go onto the battlefield learn at least basic medicine and healing magic. It is faster than usual, weak, thrumming under his fingers like a trapped bird.

“Lysithea, can you hear me?” he asks, trying to hold his voice steady though fear has washed over him like a sea, smothering him, threatening to drag him down in its currents as he maneuvers her into a sitting position.

Lysithea stirs at the sound of her name and frowns, and Lorenz breathes out a sigh of relief as she opens her eyes.

“Thank the goddess,” Lorenz mutters, and then, “what happened? Are you ill? Did the food not sit well with you? Is it your crests?”

Lysithea coughs and catches the hand that Lorenz is now pressing against her forehead. She sets it in his lap and very deliberately gives him a look. “I’m fine, I think.”

“You fainted, dearest, please allow me to express some incredulity that nothing is wrong,” Lorenz says, his voice climbing. “I think you ought to go lie down, at the very least.”

Lysithea gives him another look as she gets to her feet, ignoring his extended hand but then staggering against him as she sways upright. Lorenz catches her and tuts, and Lysithea lets out a small huff.

“Alright,” she concedes, “I probably ought to get some rest.”

They make it barely ten steps, Lysithea leaning on Lorenz, before she stumbles. Lorenz wastes no time in scooping her into his arms and carrying her back into the manor. The fact that she does not object but merely leans her head on his shoulder, arms wrapped loosely around his neck, scares him more than all the rest.

He cancels his meeting for the next day and sends a page to Garreg Mach that same night.

Lorenz watches Linhardt fret over his instruments and feels his heart climb into his throat and settle there, heavy on his windpipe. It cannot be good news if the healer won't even look at them, can only focus on packing his tools and samples of Lysithea's blood away for his trip back to the monastery.

"Well?" Lysithea says eventually, crossing her arms. Linhardt sighs.

"Hanneman might have been able to do more," he starts in an apologetic tone, and Lorenz closes his eyes and grasps his love's hand tightly in his own. "I've been going over the research he left behind as fast as I can, but there are gaps. Filling them in is slow going. It's not as though the remains of the empire are clamoring to release his notes from the last years of the war to me."

Lorenz opens his eyes in time to give Linhardt a withering look. "Are you not a crest scholar? Surely between Lysithea, an academic of not inconsiderable expertise, and yourself—"

"That's rich, considering you have spent the last few days hovering to prevent me from getting even a single moment of work done," Lysithea cuts him off, and Lorenz turns to meet her stormy expression with a pleading one of his own.

"I found you collapsed in the garden on a temperate afternoon, you have clearly been pushing yourself too hard to—"

"I don't think Lysithea could tell me anything she hasn't already shared in the years we've collaborated," Linhardt interjects, his voice and brows raised very slightly. Lorenz takes a deep breath and chastises himself for giving in to his impatience towards their old friend. "However, I think it may be useful for me to have continual access to her for testing."

Lorenz looks from Linhardt to Lysithea. The pair had been thick as thieves during their academy days, and for some time after as well, and they can read each other in a way Lorenz will likely never be privy to. There is an entire conversation happening in the pinch of Lysithea's brow, the tilt of Linhardt's head, the small glance he throws Lorenz's way. Lorenz stands up and walks around the couch towards the window, staring out unseeingly and choosing his words carefully.

"If there is... something you both feel you need to conceal from me, I assure you I can handle it and will do my utmost to accommodate any treatment Lysithea may require," he says through the resumed tightness in his throat. He knows he hasn't always been on the same page with her when it comes to what constitutes 'realistic' hopes, but he cannot bear the idea of her suffering alone, certainly not in an attempt to protect his feelings. 

"Do you want me to be frank?" Linhardt asks quietly, not of him but of Lysithea, and Lorenz meets her eyes as she nods. He moves to the couch again, leaning one hip against the arm, his fingers on Lysithea’s sleeve as Linhardt passes her sentence.

"Your condition has deteriorated much more rapidly in the last year than I would have expected," he says in the curt, self-depreciating tone of one delivering news of a personal failing. "It may be your body finally reacting to the breathing room accorded by the end of the war, or it may be some combination of environmental factors. There is really no way for me to know without detailed observation, and in any case I do not have the tools to fix the underlying cause, merely manage symptoms for you." Linhardt's face contorts into a grimace of sympathy for a moment before he says, much more softly, "we have six months, maybe eight if we take care." Lysithea lets out a shuddering breath and Lorenz looks down at her, and although she doesn't lean into him she feels steadier, somehow. Her magic pushes against his, nudges reassuringly, and Lorenz is grateful for the additional sense between them even as he curses it as the thing that is slowly wearing away at her life force.

"What do we do now, then?" Lysithea asks, her voice perfectly calm.

"Well, I'm loathe to take you back to Garreg Mach," Linhardt says, and Lorenz has to stop his nails from digging into Lysithea's arm when what he hears is _you'll be more comfortable dying at home_. "There's no real reason I cannot bring my research here, if neither of you object."

"Of course not," Lorenz assents, "we have plenty of space and my father left a large library of texts on Fódlan history, as I'm sure Lysithea has told you. Whatever you need is at your disposal."

“Alright,” Linhardt says with a small smile toward Lorenz. “I’ll get in touch with the professor and have the rest of my supplies delivered.”

“Very well. May I be alone with my wife now?” Lorenz asks, glancing at the clock on the mantle over the fire burning away against the damp of the Verdant Rain Moon. Lysithea swats at his hand.

Linhardt looks between them, opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then closes it and the metal clasp on his bag with a snap. “I’ll be in the library,” he says as he sweeps out of the sitting room, and Lorenz walks around the couch to join Lysithea again, clasping her hands in his own. He cannot help the way his eyes rove over her face, nor the way his own face is surely betraying his every fear for her to see.

She is so young and should, in a just world, have many more years in front of her, but as much as he wants those years for her there is very little he can do to help. He’d known this when he’d persuaded her to accept his hand in marriage. Against her better judgment, she’d said, and he has tried so very hard in the short time since to see she never has reason to regret it.

Lysithea’s hand tangles in his hair as she pulls him close and presses their foreheads together. They don’t speak, merely breathe together, magic mingling in the space between them, Lorenz drawing strength from hers even as his own shivers. She doesn’t comment on it, and he is grateful.

Linhardt’s supplies arrive by the end of the week and he is settled into one of their guest rooms before then. He spends hours with Lysithea, insists that Lorenz report anything and everything about her condition to him during the time he is not with her, and writes and mixes concoction after concoction with a ferocity Lorenz did not know the sleepy little scholar possessed. To Lorenz’s mixed annoyance and relief, Lysithea is more receptive to their joint admonishments for rest than she had been before. When Lorenz brings a tray of teas, two herbal, one sweet, into the library one evening, he is surprised but pleased to see Lysithea has gone up to bed and left Linhardt to his studies.

Linhardt accepts the tea with a small nod of thanks and relaxes into the armchair where he has been taking notes on an old, thick tome, a translation dictionary in his lap. “Anything interesting?” Lorenz asks conversationally, gesturing to the book.

“Oh, yes, very, but probably not very helpful,” Linhardt muses as he sips his tea, and when Lorenz gives him an expectant look he continues on. “It’s a book on historical medicine. Half the things the ancient Fódlans believed about the body didn’t hold up to rigorous testing a thousand years ago, let alone today.”

“Then why are you reading it?” Lorenz asks as he takes a small drink of his own tea and sets it down again.

“I seem to remember reading something once about a wellspring of magic somewhere in a distant land, at the edge of the world, in fact, that was said to cure all ills,” Linhardt says with a wry little smile, and Lorenz frowns at him.

“Is such a thing likely to have ever existed?”

“No,” Linhardt says after another sip of tea. “I thought I might see if there was any historical basis for such a thing but I believe I read of it originally in a book of fairy tales in the monastery library.”

“Then why are you wasting time looking for it in history books?” Lorenz asks, his frown deepening.

“We’ve seen dragons, fought a villain from the dawn of time, stood beside immortal saints. I’m not sure I’m willing to discount something that could help Lysithea just because it’s fantastical.” He finishes his tea and sets his cup and saucer down, pulling the book closer and reabsorbing himself in his reading.

Summer turns to autumn turns to winter. Lorenz settles the dispute with the village on the edge of Gloucester territory and moves on to other issues. Linhardt has book after book, scholarly article after scholarly article, increasingly unusual potion ingredients delivered to the manor and continues to run tests on Lysithea’s blood. Lysithea’s condition does not worsen, but it does not improve, either.

The professor and Claude come to visit.

Lysithea seems, despite everything, to be happy. She has promised Lorenz, time and again, that she will not give up hope of finding a cure, but somehow knowing with precision exactly when the end will come has brought her a kind of peace. At one time Lorenz might not have seen been able to see the difference between giving up and what Lysithea was now doing— is anticipating the moment of one’s death not resigning oneself to it as the only possible outcome?— but he realizes now it is not resignation but a careful refusal to dwell on all the aspects of the situation she cannot control.

Lysithea can provide Linhardt blood samples, demonstrate magic, and sit with him for hours mulling over their shared area of expertise, and working stops her from feeling helpless, but her rapidly approaching deadline has somehow made her calm. Lorenz wishes he could be grateful, because it means she is resting and engaging with friends and enjoying every small comfort he is able to give her, but he feels like the cold of the season has crept inside him every time he thinks about a life without her. There is a good chance there will be no spring for Lysithea, and Lorenz doesn’t believe his heart will ever thaw from it.

It is these thoughts that have brought him to the balcony late at night, looking out at the moon on the snow. A blanket from the sitting room is wrapped around his shoulders, but it does little good. In order for a blanket to warm you there must be heat to keep in, and the fire that powers Lorenz has burned down to embers by the past months. It is affecting his magic, and he knows Lysithea can sense it, but he refuses to bring it up to her because he cannot stand the thought of her worrying about him when she should be worrying about herself.

There is a sudden wave of warmth from behind him, and Lorenz half turns to look back at the doorway onto the balcony. Claude closes the door behind him and rubs his arms, tucking his cloak more firmly around himself.

“Byleth told me you were probably out here,” Claude says lightly, and Lorenz nods once. He does not want to be alone, not really, but he also doesn’t particularly want to talk to Claude. “It’s a little cold for it, don’t you think?”

“Hmm,” Lorenz says in reply.

“Come in and have some tea,” Claude says. “We can play cards. I’ll persuade Linhardt to join us.”

“Linhardt can rarely be persuaded to do anything he doesn’t want to,” Lorenz responds dryly, and Claude sidles up beside him and elbows him in the ribs.

“You two have that in common. Lysithea, too.”

Lorenz sighs. “What do you want, Claude? I’m in no mood for your prodding this evening.”

Claude brushes snow off the balcony railing and leans against it, arms crossed, looking up at the sky. “Honestly, I thought it might make you feel a bit better. My prodding, I mean.”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“An imitation of normalcy?” Claude says with a shrug.

Lorenz lets out a snort, and Claude turns to face him again, grinning. “See? That’s what I was after. You don’t seem like yourself when you’re not mocking me.” His tone is light, teasing, but his face is completely serious.

“I don’t feel like I have the energy for it,” Lorenz confesses. “This has been…”

“I know,” Claude says softly. “I wish there was something we could do.” He shakes his head and looks back out over the snow. His breath rises in little puffs. “We changed the world together, all of us, but between the Deer and the professor and all of our allies there’s not a single one of us that can save Lysithea. It doesn’t seem fair.”

Lorenz takes a shuddering breath and is mortified to find he is on the verge of tears. He clears his throat and blinks at the sky, watching the stars swim and then right themselves. “It should be so simple, shouldn’t it. All we need is for someone to travel to the well at the end of the world and bring back a vial of the cure,” Lorenz says with a heavy sarcasm and no small bitterness, and when he looks back at Claude the other man is watching him strangely. “What?”

“What did you mean by that? The well at the end of the world?”

“Oh,” Lorenz waves a hand dismissively. “Something Linhardt had been researching back when he first came to stay with us. An old fairy tale, I think he said.”

“A fairy tale about a magical well,” Claude says flatly, and Lorenz nods. Claude looks contemplative.

“I know that look,” Lorenz says, narrowing his eyes. “You’re scheming.”

Claude grins and his smile is the first small flare of light Lorenz has felt in several days, because it’s a hopeful grin. Claude knows something.

“It might be nothing,” Claude starts with a warning in his voice, telling Lorenz not to expect too much, but Lorenz has always been particularly bad at that, even from this man. Maybe especially from this man. “There’s a story I heard from a traveler from Morfis that has a well at the end of the world.”

Lorenz’s mouth is dry all of a sudden. “Tell me more.”

“Well, Morfis isn't particularly hospitable to outsiders,” Claude begins, “but I was trying to find out about the place during the war, looking for information about the crest of flames.” Claude shifts from foot to foot and rubs his neck, and Lorenz understands that what he had really been looking for was some fleeting hope that their professor might have still been alive, and he winces in sympathy. “This guy I met in Rysalka told me a story about how in the old days, long before the empire rose, Morfis was a place of powerful magic with a good deal of influence over Fódlan.”

“And?” Lorenz demands.

“And when the church was established and the empire was founded, they retreated back to where they came from. But not only that, the sorcerer king who ruled Morfis took the royal family and sailed off beyond the sunset. They were never heard from again, but explorers that Morfis has sent after them supposedly found an island with a spring of water so pure and clean it possessed healing properties.” Claude had gotten closer as he spoke, gesturing excitedly, and Lorenz, for the first time in months, doesn’t feel the chill of winter. He feels only Claude’s infectious excitement.

“You have to tell Linhardt about this right away,” Lorenz says, striding back to the balcony door and opening it for Claude. “If there’s even a faint chance that this really exists—”

Claude is already hurrying back inside.

As the Guardian Moon rises Lorenz waits desperately for any news from the south. Linhardt and Claude had put their heads together and Linhardt had managed to find sources for the historical existence of the well based on what little information Fódlan had about the people of Morfis. A course had been plotted. Initially they had planned to travel together, Lorenz, Linhardt, Lysithea, and Claude, but Lysithea had taken what Linhardt said was an inevitable turn for the worse at the end of the previous moon. Any hope they might have had of bringing her on a sea voyage had been replaced with the hope that Claude would get there and return again quickly.

Lorenz opens the door to the bedroom and pokes his head in. His wife is curled in a ball on the bed, covered in blankets and facing the large window looking out on the setting sun. When the door creaks, she turns her head to look at him.

“Oh,” she says quietly when she sees him, and Lorenz tries to smile, for this is clearly a day when she feels too unhappy to do so herself. They seem to have increased lately. Lorenz misses worrying about the source of her apparent calm towards her situation. He misses the days just after they married, when he could walk with her through the garden, pour her tea, stay up for hours talking about crests and magic and history. He misses her shortness with him during their academy days.

When he settles himself on the bed she pulls him close and runs her fingers through his hair. He kisses the back of her hand, something which she’d teased him about for a week the first time he’d done it, before he realized that Lysithea teasing generally meant she was pleased.

“You look tired,” she says with a small frown. Lorenz sighs and buries his face in her hair. _She_ looks tired, always looks tired, and Lorenz can feel in the way her magic fluctuates that she is exhausted. When Lysithea is tired, her magic pulses darker, deeper, as though filling up the space she’s slowly leaving behind as she loses the war against her own body. Lorenz wonders whether when she… when it happens, whether she won’t just dissolve into the air like the remnant wisps of a spell.

His magic, in contrast, has been leaving him, inch by inch, since she fainted during the Verdant Rain Moon. His specialty has always been fire, and the wick has burned down watching Lysithea fade and being unable to stop it. At times Lorenz is sure that a stiff wind will snuff him out for good, leave him a shell of the man he is supposed to be. The heir of Gloucester, a mage without magic, Thyrsus gathering dust. His father would be ashamed of him, were he still alive. Lorenz feels some small, guilty satisfaction in the idea. 

“You’re going to be alright, aren’t you?” Lysithea’s sharp voice asks after a while, and he realize he has been crying silently against her.

“I’m sorry,” Lorenz says, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. Lysithea reaches into his pocket and pulls out his handkerchief, and she kisses him gently on his cheek, his eyelids, the side of his nose as she hands it to him.

“Promise me you won’t give up,” Lysithea says, a half-smile on her face, and he nods.

“Of course not. Of course I won’t.” He swallows. “Claude should have reached his destination by now, it will be a few weeks before he returns, of course, but Linhardt says—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Lysithea chides him.

“I know what you meant, dearest.” Lorenz cannot bring himself to say anything else, because he wishes more than anything that he didn’t need to make that promise. He doesn’t know how it is that he became someone who can’t imagine living without Lysithea, but he truly cannot. The world will be dark and cold without her, and he fears the ghost he’ll become in her absence almost as much as he fears her absence itself.

While he still can, Lorenz casts a fire in the grate and lays with Lysithea as the shadows lengthen.

They receive word of Claude’s arrival a day beforehand. Lysithea sleeps for nearly eighteen hours of the day now, but she insists she must get up and meet him in the library when he arrives, so Lorenz helps her down the stairs and sits on the couch with her. To keep her warm, she says, although surely by now she must have realized that Lorenz is all but useless in that department. It suits him well enough, however, because it means he can stay by her side and read to her, regale her with stories from his childhood, leaving only to bring her tea or cocoa or small sweets that seem to be the only food she even tries to keep down these days.

The page announces Claude’s arrival in the early afternoon as Lysithea has fallen into a doze in Lorenz’s arms, a thick fur covering them both. Lorenz bids him to take Claude’s coat and bring him into the library at once, and then to go down to the kitchen and have the cook start something hot for him to eat.

Lorenz thinks he has never seen a more beautiful sight than Claude’s beaming face as he enters the room, shaking snow out of his hair as he pulls a flask from his hip.

Lysithea recovers. The water in the flask is a powerful white magic, powerful enough to bind with the crests that flow through Lysithea’s blood. They cancel each other out, the light and the dark, and Lysithea is left with only the magic that was always supposed to flow through her veins, and not that which was so unwisely and damagingly forced upon her. There is little difference at first, but slowly, very slowly, Lorenz notices the feel of her magic changes along with her physical recovery. It is warmer, somehow. Brighter. More like how his has always felt.

One morning he brings her breakfast in bed and she shoos him away, insisting that she can eat in the dining room, and then she simply gets up and puts on a robe like it takes her no effort at all. Lorenz could weep for happiness, and when he writes to Claude that afternoon he tells him he is the truest friend Lorenz has ever had and posts it before he can change his mind.

The days grow longer. The Pegasus Moon brings Lysithea’s twenty-second birthday, and she invites all of their friends to their home for a party. They all laugh together, dance, drink, and are happy and carefree. Linhardt returns to Garreg Mach with the assurance that he is welcome back any time he should want to stay, and the promise that Lysithea will join him for the conference on crests he is attending in the fall. The year comes to a close and the snow melts. Lorenz feels, more and more every day, that he has been incredibly lucky not only to have survived so much, but to have such love that make the surviving possible. They sit on the lawn at night and Lorenz shoots sparks of light into the night sky simply because he can once again command the fire that burns with his love for Lysithea, and she calls him a ridiculous old romantic as they watch the stars he creates burst and fall to earth again.

Spring turns into summer. The roses bloom. 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry to join a ship discord server and immediately write a fic about how one half of the ship is fuckin dying i'll see myself back out
> 
> anyway i drew a lot of this from Lysithea and Claude's paired ending which is. actually extremely cute and good. i love it a lot.


End file.
